I awoke as if beckoned,pulled by some cosmic string out the doorand into the fresh, sea air

my sleepy eyes struggled to focus,but when they did, I was mesmerized

for, sometime as I slept,something magical had happened –night had become as smooth as a mirror,the entire canopy of stars shining with ebullience above, casting a perfect reflection across the surface of the water

it looked as though there were now two heavens, one above and one below,nothing but a sliver of silver-blue separating them

‘where do I stand?,’ I wondered,night’s silence and purity louder than any waves I'd ever heard,its stillness heavy with presence,holding in the warmth of its palm something I needed to know

I listened, but no words were heard,there was only the stillness,but in that stillness, there was a luminescence from within, one just a bright as the sacred, mirrored stars, its tentacles reaching from one excitation to the next, energy to energy, reaching out to commune, to converge

it was as though all the most disparate elements of my biography were at last knitting together,all that I have loved and known in this world stitching themselves up, forming a never-ending tapestry of constellation,becoming one thing

I felt alive,more alive than I’ve ever felt,more awake,my mind and heart humbly able to function at the uppermost limits of their capacities,seeing and understanding everything,as though watching it all from the highest imaginable ridge

except, there I was,mere mortal,standing not upon a ridge, but somewhere inside the sliver of silver-blue

some would look at me through
eyes clouded with sadness and sorrow,
ones filled with fear, really

some would say I’m made
of wrinkles and lines,
no longer black and white,
just a ghost of gray,
a shadow of who I once was,
awaiting the day when I whisper
my last breath

yes, I see the wrinkles and the lines,
but I see a roadmap,
a face weathered by experience,
a life chartered amidst joy and sorrow,
compassion and pain,
heartache and bliss,
sunshine and thunderstorm

I see a body that no longer works
as it used to, and never will,
but I see legs that climbed mountains,
arms that hugged until they could not,
hands that built and tore down
and built again,
and a heart that beat so loudly,
I had to share its overflow
with others

I see a worn woman,
but it’s not through saddened eyes
that I look

for, I fear not,
because I see in these wrinkles and lines
and in this tired body,
all the places I have been,
the people I have touched,
and those who will remain
a part of me,
forever a key in my legend

out in the world, alone,
I wanted make something of myself,
so I became

I became, became,
for that’s what adults should do,
mothers should do,
career women, wives, friends, daughters,
families, neighbors, consumers,should do

Except, my heart, mind, and spirit
were not at peace

they were lumps in my throat,
sleepless nights, migraines,
stuffed tears and boxed emotions,
unspoken words, and an endless dialogue
in my head no living thing
should be subject to

my spirit had the courage
to finally ask my heart,
‘who was I before the ‘shoulds’,
before I started to become?
what is MY truth?
who am I that has nothing to do
with the people I love,
or the work that I do?’

and my heart answered
with only one word,
‘unbecome’

so I am unbecoming,
I am stripping,
peeling and shedding,
layers upon layers
of ‘shoulds’ and ‘outta’s’,
getting lost in order to be,
to come

there are these deep set, vivid green eyes staring at me, transparent, yet saturated with the depth of long roads traveled, courses diligently charted, wars fought and won, some lost, but either way, they never gave up

their warmth tells tales of love, the kind which permeates her soul and never dies, the kind that grows and evolves, seeds selflessly sown and soil organically enriched with her bare hands

their penetrating regard alludes to a life with sharp edges, eroded over time by love’s river whose water was made less murky as they filtered out the shoulda, coulda, woulda’s to see deeper, to finally see clearly their own reflection

there’s something in these eyes that nothing earthly could ever extinguish; I have no doubt these eyes possess a radiance, even amidst life’s darkness moments

for as long as she could remember,
she’d felt it,
even though she wasn’t superstitious,
she couldn’t deny it,
this unwelcome,
yet eerily comforting presence,
signs of its existence ever-present,
but no more so than in vulnerable situations,
especially when her feelings
were so big she thought she’d crack

sometimes, it consumed her;
when she most wanted to hide,
she’d feel it in the pulsing pressure of unfallen tears behind her eyes,
in the ball of rubber bands tangled
and bouncing in her belly,
in the twisted tightening behind her ribcage, the anvil resting on her heart,
in the shallow breathe,
because anything deeper would make her burst,
collapsing her into herself

it was most present,
and most potent,
as this toxic voice inside her head,
one which constantly told her
she didn’t belong,
that she wasn’t enough,
that she owed something she could never quite repay,
was expected something she could never live up to,
that the world must be railing against her,
this voice loudest when the world seemed to quiet around her,
when she desperately attempted to slow,
to try and savor it,
her pillow’s other side never cool,
and her mind never quite at rest

it was a blurred existence,
a constant feeling of living in a black mist,
one she couldn’t shake no matter what she tried,
no matter how much she laughed and smiled and pleased on the outside

she’d tried to hide from it
by pretending it wasn’t there,
by speeding through her days at 100mph, trying not to blink

and yet, here it was, still,
a backpack of lead upon her back,
making her feel as if she were
living in a spiral,
every action destined to repeat itself

it took 40 years of this sinister ghost chasing her,
40 years of futile running,
years upon years of spiral and repeat,
until she finally slowed,
until she looked with unclouded eyes,
startled when she saw her own reflection

all that time,
she’d been haunted by herself,
the weight of regret,
a relentless stream of self-deprecation,
and even punishment,
obscuring every decision,
every interaction,
every day

afraid she’d become the epitome of everything she’d cursed,
she’d become just that in the running,
the illusion of control causing her to fall further and further out of its grasp,
making her want to scream until there was no voice left to hear,
her fear of vulnerability so strong,
it had begun to shroud the hope in her eyes

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